J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Wales 1798 > Cyfarthfa Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner St Donat's: The Watchtower Seen from the Shore, beyond Cliffs 1798

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘St Donat's: The Watchtower Seen from the Shore, beyond Cliffs’ 1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
St Donat’s: The Watchtower Seen from the Shore, beyond Cliffs 1798
D01647
Turner Bequest XLI 18
Pencil on white wove paper, 291 x 455 mm
Stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram above ‘XLI – 18a’ [sic] bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The castle, built by the Stradling family in the fourteenth century, was in disrepair in Turner’s time; it was extensively restored and rebuilt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its situation on a rocky promontory makes a picturesque site which Turner noted in two other drawings in this sketchbook (D01649, D01653; Turner Bequest XLI 19, 22). The latter was used as a basis for a large watercolour of the castle, executed about the turn of the century (currently untraced)1 which ignores its dramatic coastal context and gives it a pastoral setting in the idealised manner of Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682).2
This pencil drawing was listed by Finberg as the recto of the sheet, with the coloured study on the other side (D01648; Turner Bequest XLI 18a) as the verso. Present practice is to treat the watercolour as the recto, which the blind stamp on that side suggests has long been the case.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.331 no.279, reproduced; see also Andrew Wilton, Turner in Wales, exhibition catalogue, Mostyn Art Gallery, Llandudno 1984, p.71 no.101, reproduced.
2
See Butlin 1975, p.48, and Wilton 1975, p.66; and in general Ian Warrell and others, Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery, London 2012.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘St Donat’s: The Watchtower Seen from the Shore, beyond Cliffs 1798 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-st-donats-the-watchtower-seen-from-the-shore-beyond-cliffs-r1173263, accessed 23 November 2024.